“Jeffrey,” he said, and before Anders could ask any more questions, he straightened up and plucked the rag from his back pocket and started wiping down the bar top between them. “You eating today or did you just stop in for a cold one? Soda, that is.”
Anders’s stomach growled, as if on cue. He checked his watch—still fifty minutes before the ferry left for the mainland. “I’ll take the chicken basket again. And a Coke.”
“Pepsi OK?”
“Oh. Yeah,” Anders said. Being from Atlanta, he still wasn’t used to Coke not being the primary soda brand.
Jeffrey disappeared into the back, and Anders sat hunched over the bar, letting his gaze drift along the fishing décor on the back wall—buoys and nets and paddles all hung so haphazardly it was hard to tell if it was actually ornamentation for the restaurant or storage. And then a loud bang caught Anders’s attention, and he twisted his head toward the table of watermen.
“—it’s out of hand! Not the boat, I don’t care how long BobDan keeps it on planks for, but Piper! The entire thing.” At the name “Piper,” Anders’s mind immediately flashed to the girl he embarrassed himself so fully in front of. “Look, Tom was like a son to all of us after his daddy died, but it’s not right, pretending he’s alive like that. How long are we supposed to do it for? Piper needs to move on. The whole town does.”
Anders’s mind clicked into overdrive then, sorting out the sentences he had overheard; a few words, really, that kept replaying over and over.
Piper.
Tom.
Then memories began colliding in Anders’s brain so fast, like keys fitting into locks, that he had trouble holding all of his thoughts in his head at once: Jess’s newspaper article about the missing waterman, Tom Parrish. Parrish. That was the name that sounded so familiar when he read the article, not Tom. He remembered Jeffrey’s words: You’re not the first to strike out with Piper Parrish. He wondered if the two were siblings, and then remembered Jeffrey’s other strange words: She tell you she was married? . . . Depends on who you ask.
That must have been what he had meant. If Piper and Tom were married, and they never found Tom’s body, then it wasn’t all that unusual for a wife to hold out hope that her husband was still alive—to want to believe that he was still out there somewhere, and not at the bottom of the ocean, or eaten by sharks, as Jess had so plainly put it.
He turned his attention back to the watermen, as another man chimed in: “That’s not even the worst of it. You know what people are saying.” He paused, and Anders subtly moved his body closer, hanging on to every word. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and Anders had to strain to hear. “That it wuddn’t no accident, what happened to Tom.”
Anders’s entire world stopped then, as if someone had hit a pause button on a remote. The hair on his arms stood up.
You came all the way to Frick Island and missed the biggest story out here.
The narrowing of his world suddenly widened once again as he eagerly retrained his focus on the watermen, only to find that they were all staring directly at him, and not in a welcoming, kind way.
Face reddening for the second time in this restaurant, Anders quickly swiveled back forward in his stool and began reinspecting one of the many raised bumps on his arm, itching it intently with a stubby fingernail. After a beat the man began speaking again, but too low for Anders to hear.
The red plastic basket of chicken fingers appeared in front of Anders on the bar top, and he looked up at Jeffrey. “Uh, thanks,” he said.
“Need anything else?”
“Nope,” Anders said, wanting Jeffrey to leave so he could continue eavesdropping. But as Jeffrey made his way back to the kitchen entrance, Anders heard the unmistakable squeak of chairs being pushed backward, the familiar rustling up of belongings. The men were leaving.
Anders stared at the deep-fried food, ignoring the déjà vu moment from just a few weeks earlier. It wuddn’t no accident. If there were four more enticing words to a reporter, Anders wasn’t sure what they might be. Were they saying Tom was killed? Were the police investigating it? Jess hadn’t mentioned anything about that in her article.
“Hey,” Jeffrey said, startling him out of his reverie.
“Yeah?”
“You know who you should talk to.”
“Who?”
“Piper Parrish.”
Anders just stared at him, wondering if he, too, had overheard the watermen. Or if he could somehow hear what Anders had been thinking.
“Remember the girl who was in here? The one you hit on—”
“I did not— I was not—” Anders stuttered indignantly.
“Yeah, OK. Whatever.” Jeffrey grinned, with that same devilish edge to it. “Anyway, she’s into all that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Science. The earth. She’d probably help you.”
“Huh,” Anders said noncommittally. He had approached her once, to his spectacular regret. He wasn’t eager to make the same mistake twice, especially now knowing that she was a woman deep in grief over her missing, likely dead husband. But . . . the fact that her missing, likely dead husband could possibly be her missing, likely dead, possibly murdered husband gave Anders a certain level of motivation to seek her out. If anyone would know about Tom’s disappearance—and if there was anything nefarious about it—it would most likely be his wife.
Jeffrey motioned to Anders’s uneaten chicken fingers. “You sure you don’t need anything else?”
“Actually, I do,” Anders said. “Is there anywhere else to stay out here besides that motel?”
Chapter 8
Pearl Olecki stood at her kitchen counter whisking the waffle batter in her smallest mixing bowl with more vigor than necessary. She hadn’t slept more than two hours last night—or any night since the town gathering on Wednesday— tossing and turning in her heated irritation. A cell tower. A cell tower! How could
